Overcome

Use the overcome action to achieve assorted goals appropriate to your skill. Every skill has a certain niche of miscellaneous endeavors that fall under its purview, certain situations where it’s an ideal choice. A character with Burglary tries to jimmy a window, a character with Empathy tries to calm the crowd, and a character with Crafts tries to fix the broken axle on his wagon after a desperate chase.
When your character’s in one of these situations and there’s something between her and her goals, you use the overcome action to deal with it. Look at it as the “catch-all” action for every skill—if it doesn’t fall into any other category, it’s probably an overcome action. The opposition you have to beat might be active or passive, depending on the situation.
• When you fail an overcome action, you have two options. You can simply fail, which means you don’t attain your goal or get what you were after, or you can succeed at a serious cost.
• When you tie an overcome action, you attain your goal or get what you were after, but at a minor cost.
• When you succeed at an over come action, you attain your goal without any cost.
• When you succeed with style at an overcome action, you get a boost in addition to attaining your goal.
You may occasionally run into situations where it seems appropriate to provide a different benefit or penalty for a given action result than the one listed. It’s okay to go back to the basic description of the four outcomes and sub in something that makes sense. For example, on the overcome action it says you get a boost in addition to success when you succeed with style. But if that overcome roll is going to end the scene, or you can’t think of a good boost, You may choose to offer a story detail as an extra benefit instead.

Landon stalks around the siege tower of the Red Emperor’s for tress, trying to sabotage the ballistas. If he succeeds, the army who hired him has a much better chance in the field when they attack tomorrow morning. Amanda says, “Okay, so you make it to the top of the tower, and you start working. But then, you hear footsteps echoing below you in the tower—sounds like the next guard patrol got here just a bit early.” “Damn,” Lenny says. “Figures I’d get the one guard squad with real discipline. I need to disable these and get out—if they find me, General Ephon already told me he’d disavow my existence.” Amanda shrugs a bit and says, “Work fast? You’re looking at passive opposition here—crunched for time, and dealing with intricate machinery bits, so I’ll call that Great (+4).” Landon has the Crafts skill at Average (+1). Lenny grumbles and says, “Should have convinced Zird to do this.” He rolls , get ting a +2, for a Good (+3) result. Not good enough. Landon chips in a fate point and says, “Well, you know what I always say... Smashing Is Always an Option,” referring to one of his aspect . Amanda chuckles and nods, and with the invocation, he manages a Superb (+5). That’s enough to succeed, but not enough to succeed with style, so Landon accomplishes his objective at no cost. He describes how he hastily dismantles the ballista, applying rather violent sabotage before diving for a hiding spot as the guards get closer...